Princes’ Crusade: first victory

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Ruth

Around the same time that Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans Avoir were arriving in Constantinople, four official organized armies left Europe. As these armies traveled, the disorganized Peoples’ Crusade met thorough defeat in Anatolia. Only a few weeks after their 3000 survivors had been rescued by Byzantine soldiers, the first official force arrived under Hugh Vermandois, brother of the King of France.

Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto (that is, a Norman who had just conquered a swath of Italy) and Godfrey of Bouillon led the other three armies. With Godfrey rode his brothers Eustace Count of Boulogne, and Baldwin who as yet had no title. Modern estimates guess that Raymond of Toulouse had the largest army, and that all together there were probably many thousands of armed men, perhaps 30,000. Most were foot soldiers.

The first difficulty they met was that the Emperor considered them potentially an invasion and wanted them to swear allegiance to him before they could go farther into his territory. He wanted them to swear not to conquer any territory on their own, but only in the name of Constantinople. It’s interesting that the leader who successfully resisted this oath was the Count of Toulouse; Toulouse remained independent until 1229, when the Crusade against its Cathars left the region charred and broken. Toulouse did not consider itself French, nor under allegiance to the French king. Raymond IV also led the largest army. He swore not to harm the Emperor, but no more.

The first expedition of the official First Crusade was led against Nicaea by two Byzantine generals, the four princes, and the Papal Legate. This city was a Greek colony not far from Constantinople. It’s the home of the Nicene Creed, which we pronounce “Nice-een,” but in Greek it’s spelled Νικαια, with a k.

Sultan Kilij Arslan was using Nicaea as forward base and capital, which demonstrates just how close his army was coming to a frontal attack on Constantinople. The Byzantines certainly knew the town’s defenses well, since it had been one of their strongholds until very recently. Kilij Arslan’s army was away at the time, conquering more of Anatolia.

Nicaea’s chief defense against attack or siege was the presence of Lake Ascanius, a 20-mile long inland lake. The lake worked well to foil attempts to box the town in. The Crusader expedition was not prepared to fight on water as well as on land, but the Turkish garrison could always bring supplies from the other side of the lake. It must have been very maddening for the Byzantine generals to see all of Lake Ascanius’ boats in the hands of Turks.

However, some Crusaders had come by sea, and their boats were idle in Constantinople’s harbor. The Emperor sent some of these ships by tree-trunk log rollers, more than 40 miles to the inland lake. It doesn’t seem likely that he paid to have the ships hauled back, which may be why he didn’t use his own ships. Now both sides had boats!

But here, Alexios Komnenos played a careful strategy that, in retrospect, was the first step in the Crusades’ breakdown. He had appointed two generals, and the one closer to him was given secret instructions. While Byzantine forces appeared to be assisting in the siege, General Manuel Boutoumites arranged a sudden surrender of Nicaea only to Byzantine forces. Probably the Turks and resident Greeks had heard of the Normans’ reputation in Sicily. Once Nicaea surrendered, its terms stipulated that the Crusaders’ entry would be very controlled. General Boutoumites allowed them to enter only in very small groups, like tourists.

Nicaea was not sacked. Instead, the Byzantine treasury paid the Crusader princes for their valuable role. This was the model Alexios wanted to continue following as the guest army moved farther into Turkish-held territory. But his careful plans had rightly conveyed to the princes that he didn’t trust them. Their knights grumbled about the lack of loot. As a first try at cooperation, Nicaea was both success and loss.

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Assassins in a land of divisions

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Ruth

Muslim regions were no longer unified in any real way, by the time the real Crusaders arrived. I’ve previously explained the three most significant blows to Muslim unity: Fatimid evangelism, North African puritanism, and the rapid conquest of Turks from the east.

In the years running up to European invasion, the Fatimid dynasty’s fervent belief system had fractured into three factions. The Druze refused to accept as Imam any of the Fatimid Caliphs after al-Hakim. Adherents to the esoteric doctrine of Druze theology were, as now, clustered in Syria. An early persecution prompted them to make secrecy a tenet of their faith, so they stayed very quiet for the next centuries.

The next major break was more disruptive. Caliph al-Mutansir, who died in 1094, supposedly wanted his older son, Nizar, to be the next Caliph and Imam. But after al-Mutansir died, the younger son, al-Mustali, seized power. Nizar had to hide.

This event created the next Ismaili split; most Ismaili splits were over which brother was supposed to succeed the father. While the majority of Fatimids in Egypt accepted Caliph al-Mustali (what else could they do?), a radical group of Nizar supporters did not. They fled Egypt, following a trail of believers and safe houses into Persia.

The Seljuks in Persia were deeply hostile to Ismailis and other kinds of Shi’ites. There was no way that Turks could ever be seen as close relatives of Mohammed, so all Shi’ite doctrine was directly hostile to their rule. They persecuted and executed Ismaili missionaries as possible.

By the 1090s, when Caliph al-Mutansir was getting old in Cairo, Seljuk power was growing, mainly under the guidance of a Persian vizier who served several Seljuk generals in succession. Around this time, Hassan i-Sabbah (the chief Ismaili Da’wa in Iran) obtained the remote hilltop fort in northern Iran that became the headquarters for Ismailis and then specifically Nizaris. He named it Alamut, meaning Eagle’s Nest (or Eagle’s Teaching). Once he entered it, he never left. He shut himself into a room and devoted his hours to scholarship and prayer.

The Ismailis wanted to strike back at Seljuk Sunni power; as Iranian Ismailis were few in number, they had to use strategic killing rather than frontal assaults. In Alamut, lower-ranked believers were trained as killers. Their first targets were Seljuks, but after the Nizari split, Alamut considered itself at war with all Muslim rulers. Anyone but Nizar or his descendants was an anti-Caliph who led people straight to hell.

We’ve all heard that the first Assassins used hashish either to evoke Paradise or to carry out their attacks. Current scholarship is against this popular idea, seeing it as a slander put out by non-Nizaris (ie. pretty much everyone else). Ismaili doctrine was extreme and fervent, and it may have been enough to inspire their self-sacrificial assassins, the fedayeen, to give up their lives.

Assassins were trained for stealth, patience, and final delivery of the planned blow. Their weapon was the knife, often with a poisoned tip. They were allowed to take time to assimilate to a town, or to disguise themselves as harmless persons (like whirling dervishes). But eventually, they always got their man. Sometimes their orders were only to threaten and frighten a ruler, but often they carried out public assassinations, like on the steps of the main mosque. Other times, they assassinated in private. The strategic plan was to make everyone else believe that Nizari assassins were almost supernatural in their ability to reach their targets.

The first Alamut-ordered assassination was of the Seljuk vizier, Nizam al-Mulk. He was a gifted ruler who succeeded in maintaining power balance among the last of the Abbasids, various Seljuks, and yet more Turkic tribes flooding into Persia. But while he was traveling from Isfahan to Baghdad on a litter, a Sufi whirling dervish approached him, perhaps for alms. It was really an Ismaili assassin; he stabbed the Vizier. Only our imaginations can suggest what might have happened if the talented vizier had been alive when the Crusaders arrived. Instead, the assassins created a power vacuum.

After Alamut became the Nizari stronghold and headquarters, the Nizaris became the most feared sect. Any murders carried out in the Muslim zone for nearly 200 years were attributed to Nizari assassins. It was often true, but it served their purposes also when it wasn’t. Nizari doctrine spread, and there were other hilltop fortresses to train assassins. Just to glance ahead at the future: eventually, the Mongols destroyed Alamut. Nizaris continued to believe their doctrine but became a dispersed, secretive sect. The Aga Khan is the current Imam of the Nizaris. The Khans of modern times have never tried to seize secular power and do not order assassinations.

 

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The end of the popular Crusade

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Ruth

About five waves of disorganized pilgrims set out to cross Hungary on foot in 1096. In the first wave, they split up as they reached the Danube, some going by boat, some walking to a better ford. Walter Sans-Avoir was the first to reach Belgrade, outpost of Byzantium.

Walter’s band ran into unexpected trouble in Belgrade because the Byzantine commander didn’t know what to do with them. He told them not to proceed farther until he had instructions. Their provisions ran out, so they took food from Hungarian and Serbian farmers (to put it bluntly, they robbed and pillaged the countryside). Eventually the commander let them move ahead to southern Serbia while he sent messengers to Constantinople. Peter the Hermit’s band arrived next and ended up in a full riot in Belgrade after a marketplace dispute. Many of the local people were killed, and the “pilgrims” robbed and torched the city.

In southern Serbia, the two groups met at the city of Nisz. Again, a dispute touched off a riot, but in this case, a garrison of Byzantine soldiers joined the battle and as many as a quarter of the Crusading pilgrims were killed. The rest were escorted by a heavy guard to Sofia, then to Constantinople. Italians arrived by sea, joining the mix of Germans and French.

Emperor Alexius I Comnenus didn’t know what to do with this dangerous, undisciplined band of armed foreigners. It was not at all the sort of help he had asked for. The end result was both sensible for the Emperor and disastrous for the Crusaders: he ordered boats to carry them across the Bosporus to the Asian side. They landed on Byzantine territory but within a day’s walk they were into areas threatened by Turks. Peter the Hermit was still with them, but he had lost control. Norman/Italian robber knights now led the army, such as it was. It still included paupers, women, and children.

The Sultan of Seljuk Anatolia at this time was Kilij Arslan. He had declared independence from Seljuk Baghdad and was in the process of conquering all of Anatolia for his people. He had the momentum of conquest on his side and his men were practiced in battle.

The Europeans attacked some towns now held by Seljuks. It was very poor military strategy, because if you push too far ahead of your support system, you can be stranded and surrounded. Kilij Arslan’s men surrounded one part of the European force in a town they had just taken and besieged them into defeat. They killed about 30,000 of the rest of Peter the Hermit’s group nearby, including paupers and women. Some surrendered, converted to Islam, and went into slavery in Persia. Three thousand Crusaders (probably fighting men) survived in an abandoned castle until they were rescued by a Byzantine force, the only ones to return home.

By October 1096, the popular Crusade was over. Two hundred years later, a group of children may have set out to take back the Holy Land. Otherwise, the lesson appears to have been learned. Taking back the Holy Land was not an End Times miracle or a holy pilgrimage. If ordinary people wanted a way to be holy, it had better not involve spears.

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Massacre of Jews

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Ruth

In 1096, many of Germany’s Jews were massacred by the minor knights and paupers gathering for “pilgrimage.” When we look back from the 21st century, the event doesn’t seem surprising because we know the end of the story. But that’s not the best way to read history; we have to look for the beginning of the story as well. A one-word answer, like “Anti-Semitism,” isn’t good enough to the question, “why?”

Cologne’s name came from Latin “Colonia.” Around the turn of the BC/AD timeline, Roman legions went up the Rhine River and established a fort among a friendly Germanic tribe, the Ubii. General Nero Claudius Germanicus and his wife had their first daughter, Agrippina, in the camp; she eventually became Emperor Claudius’ fourth wife, and in 50 AD he named her birthplace “Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis.” The new German territory attracted Jewish settlement, perhaps before the general Jewish diaspora in 70 AD, but certainly in the years after. Jews helped develop viticulture in the Rhine Valley.

By the time of the Frankish migration into Europe, the Jews of Cologne were well established in farming and trade. They were never viewed as immigrants. Why, then, did they suddenly face massacre? Six facts about 11th century Northern European society, combined together, seem to give us an answer:

1. Rise in Norman power; the Normans were against everything the Jews were best at: scholarship, diplomacy, finance and trade. Norman lords seemed to feel natural scorn for the humble, clever, internationally-connected Jewish merchants and were glad for an opportunity to show their scorn. As we’ve also seen, they were a very aggressive, militant culture even compared to their distant cousins, the Franks and Anglo-Saxons.

2. Association of Jews with the Holy Land, the Holy Land with Saracens, and the Saracens with destruction of churches. Word of mouth reports connected Jews to Caliph al-Hakim’s mad persecutions around 1009, then the tales had about 90 years to grow.

3. Illiterate theology was taught in sound-bites. In the popular version, the Jews killed Jesus. Although our literate culture can easily find the story segments and theological commentaries that balance and neutralize the simple “Jews killed Christ” version, their illiterate culture could not. Anti-Jewish theology had not been emphasized for a long time; but once people were blaming Jews for al-Hakim’s destruction, dormant anti-Jewish teaching came back.

4. The growth of towns, with more Jews located in the towns than in the countryside. In Colonia Claudia, Jews had been farmers; but in medieval Cologne/Koln, they were town-based traders. They had more cash on hand; some aristocrats legally robbed them by requiring loans. Certainly, lesser knights looked for chances to rob them too.

5. Europe’s level of violence was higher than it should be at this time; that’s part of why the Pope was encouraging them to go fight Turks. The knight-training apparatus had been operating since Charlemagne’s time; now many trained fighting men had no land. Some of them adopted bridges, charging tolls at spear-point. Some worked out “protection” rackets. Many flocked to civil wars among the aristocrats. They were unprincipled, violent men whose religion consisted of some ritual practice and a little superstition.

6. Millenialism makes people feel like the usual rules are suspended. We saw this in 1999 when sensible people appeared to believe that society was about to collapse. Same thing here—less concern about plausibility, probability, and long-term consequences.

Knights and paupers converging on Cologne attacked Jewish neighborhoods along the way, and some of them attacked more Jews as they headed for Hungary. Jewish homes and businesses were plundered by ragged mobs. Some of the devout paupers attempted to convert Jews in the process of pillaging their goods; some Jews committed suicide to escape. They came in disorganized waves, inspired by itinerant preachers, so some towns saw several groups of them pass through.

The organized Crusaders were less of a problem. Godfrey of Bouillon is said to have sworn to kill Jews (to “avenge” Christ) before setting out on his holy mission, but he did not impulsively attack without warning. A Jewish leader warned the Emperor, who forbade the attack; and the Jews of Mainz and Cologne paid 500 silver marks to persuade Godfrey to leave them alone.

We don’t know how many Jews died in northern France and Germany. At this time, paper was not readily available, so most people did not keep written records. The few written accounts tell of widespread killing and theft, suicide, and flight of refugees toward Poland. The Jews of Germany, previously the most secure Jewish community, never recovered from the trauma. Their Christian neighbors never again saw them as fully integrated. All crimes are more easily carried out a second time; the precedent is laid down.

 

 

 

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Crusade evangelism

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Ruth

A century before, when the year changed from 999 to 1000, many people had anticipated the end of the world. Coming up to 1100, the same expectation was in the air. In the months surrounding Pope Urban II’s call to Crusade, natural disasters lent credibility to the feeling that the world might end. There was a lunar eclipse; Hugh Vermandois, King Philip I’s brother, found it persuasive and so did many common people. The weather had been poor for a few years, so there were local famines and then, due to the dampness, a fungal infection entered the wheat. This is called ergot, and it produces a natural LSD. Starving peasants ate the deformed wheat and started tripping; some died.

The Pope’s council had been held in Clermont, in central France. One famous priest in attendance was Peter the Hermit. He immediately began to preach the Pope’s call, walking west and north into Normandy and Flanders. Within two months, the message was spreading through these regions with a new twist: Peter the Hermit had himself received a call directly from Christ. All devout Christians were called to come to this historic pilgrimage, in which the armies of all Christians would come together in the Holy Land to welcome Christ’s return. Peter the Hermit may have been to the Holy Land on pilgrimage himself; he told lurid stories about Seljuk cruelty to Christians.

Two types of listeners received his message. The largest group was of paupers and uneducated peasants. They believed that the prayers of sick, poor and disabled people were purer and more effective. The poorest of the poor were welcomed to be part of the historic pilgrimage. This group included beggars, women, and children. They had no sense of military purpose; they were gathering for the end of the world, following a divine call.

The other significant group provided leadership, such as it was. They were mostly trained knights and minor aristocrats who did not fight in the organized armies of the major royalty. Count Emicho of Leiningen said that he had received his own personal divine call. His town was located along the Rhine river and he began gathering knights and others from Rhine Valley towns. Another knight leader is known as Walter the Penniless, but that seems to be a trick of translation; he was really called Walter (Guatier) of Boissy-Sans-Avoir and became known as Walter Sans-Avoir, which sounds like “Walter who Hath Not.” A few priests, like Peter, also not only preached pilgrimage but became gathering points and then leaders for groups in France and Germany.

Pope Urban II had set a date of mid-August, 1096 for the main expedition to set out. This was a realistic date that permitted messenger travel, gathering provisions, and doing some last-minute weapon-making and training. But by spring, enthusiastic paupers, priests and minor knights were ready to go. They didn’t plan ahead for provisions. Some assumed that the journey was short; some had nothing to begin with. The knights assumed that they’d live off the land, which is what they tended to do anyway. Everyone assumed that God would provide, and especially that the Byzantine Emperor (whose riches were legendary) would provide as soon as they crossed into his territory.

Hungary and Bulgaria were both recently converted to Christianity; Bulgaria was loyal to Constantinople, while Hungary had pledged loyalty to the Roman Pope. So, as the evangelists saw it, they had only to gather in Germany and walk on foot through Hungary, and then they’d be at the Emperor’s doorstep in Belgrade. There was no reason to wait; winter was ending and only famine and ergot awaited those who stayed to plant and harvest at home. Some may have been eager to leave due to thinking that to the east lay riches and ample food.

Cologne, the oldest Roman town in the Rhineland, was the agreed starting point. Waves of volunteers arrived and waited, then impatiently set out. Perhaps as many as five ragged “armies” of knights and paupers left Cologne that spring and summer. Peter the Hermit went with one group; Count Emicho and Walter Sans-Avoir led others.

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Maps in the Middle Ages

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Ruth

Geographical maps are extremely important in our world. Everyone owns some kind of map, even a redneck yahoo with a state map in his glove compartment. Maps have been part of our culture so long that we can’t conceive of a mapless world.

Medieval Europe in the 11th century was essentially map-free. There were some beautifully-painted maps (website here devoted to showing you some of the nicest ones). There were, in rare places, some loosely accurate ones; these were only local. (For example, the map website shows a mosaic-tile map of the region around the church.) Much later, when more people were traveling on pilgrimages, some “maps” showed them the road the way they’d actually experience it: as a linear string of places. The most accurate maps were those used by Mediterranean ships, and they weren’t accurate in our sense. They were accurate in that they correctly aided the pilot to reach one harbor from another; they didn’t look down like a satellite.

Maps were usually conceptual in a way that our modern world can’t appreciate. One conceptual layout literally looked like the letters T and O. Here’s a typical T-O map that suggested how Asia, Europe and Africa related. North is off to the left; the north-at-top mapping convention didn’t exist. Some T-O maps prominently featured Jerusalem at the center; it was the spiritual center and, at the same time, roughly at the T-intersection of a T-O map. It was impossible to tell relative size from T-O maps.

Pragmatic distance was expressed in terms of time, typically walking time or the average sailing speed. Every peasant or townsman knew how much of a day would be taken up in getting to the next town or the lord’s castle. Some who owned horses knew how long it would take to ride, probably at a walk or trot, to a farther town. Peddlers and minstrels knew many such distances and directions. But most people did not leave their immediate neighborhood. Farm to town, back to farm. Village to village. Home to church. A far distance meant several days of walking, which few could afford unless the travel was itself their livelihood.

So nobody had any idea how far it was from Paris to Rome. Marine pilots knew how large the Mediterranean was, but they had little sense of land distances. Very few even of them could have suggested how long it would take a Crusader in Normandy to arrive at Constantinople. Jerusalem, apart from being the center of the world, was completely unknown to all but a very few.

The lack of mapping comprehension is very important for understanding what happened when the ordinary people heard pilgrimage sermons. Their usual pilgrimages were to regional sites, if they went at all: Frenchmen went to Tours or Compostela; the privileged few went to Rome. Villagers went to the local abbot’s grave; one region in France honored a dog as a saint, and people carried gifts and sick babies to the dog’s grave.

Pilgrimages to the actual Holy Land were as far beyond their comprehension as astronomical distances are to most of us. Jerusalem was very far away, for sure. It might even take a fortnight to walk there! Nay, says another peasant, I’ve heard that if you walked a year and a day, you’d not reach it. Nonsense, says another, it’s just on the other side of Rome, and the bishop himself went to Rome and back in one month. If someone had blindfolded a French or German peasant and forced him to walk for one week, then uncovered his eyes and said, “Behold, the Holy Land!” he’d probably have fallen to his knees in awe, even if he was looking only at Mainz or Marseille. They were like children who dig a hole to China.

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Spiritual vacuum among the people

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Ruth

We’ve been talking about 11th century Europe in terms of its political strife and church reform movements at the top. To understand the next event in the new Crusade, we have to look at the vacuum left among the common people.

The recent Popes had been monks of the Cluniac variety, referring to the Benedictine monastery founded in 910 in Cluny, France. As yet, there were no other orders of monks; all Western monasteries followed the Order of St. Benedict, laid down in pre-medieval times. It stipulated what a monk could own, wear and eat; at what hours the monastic community must gather for prayer; and other aspects of life. Ordination as a monk meant giving up most rights to choice. The ideal was to leave the world, deny oneself, and center each day around prayer. Every monk who left the world and went into a cloister helped to save society by keeping a continual prayer rising to God.

Over time, Benedictine monasteries had grown somewhat slack. Property left in exchange for prayers for the dead made the monastery, if not the individual monk, rich. This land was often controlled by a secular ruler who became the de facto ruler of the monastery. Some monks took concubines and nobody did anything about it.

The monastery at Cluny was stricter; it returned to the original Rule of Benedict in the most literal sense. Most importantly, the Abbot at Cluny was responsible only to the Pope. The 11th century Cluniac monks who became Popes were fiercely opposed to any secular or state control over the church. But at the same time, they also upheld the ideal of holiness as withdrawal from the world and giving up sex. By the 11th century, many of them were agitating for all priests to conform to the Rule of Benedict; at that time some local priests were married.

The battle against state control and “the world” was the Big Question of the time, and little attention was given to what non-monks should be doing. Obviously, if everyone became a monk, society would come to an end. But the monastic ideal suggested that everyone else could go on living while the monasteries would be spiritual on their behalf. Ordinary people were to follow the Sacraments (baptism, Mass, confession, marriage if financially possible, last rites) and go about their business in a non-blasphemous way. While this was enough for most people, it left some feeling like there should be more. If they couldn’t go into monasteries, but wanted to be holier, what was left? Eventually, this vacuum contributed to the Cathar religious movement and then to the Protestant Reformation/Revolution. But for now, it just hung in the air, unstated.

I read somewhere recently that in order to get a bill passed into law, you have to use overkill and oversell. Not passing the bill has to be portrayed as the worst thing ever, while passing it would solve everything. That’s the process Pope Urban II embarked on. He needed to unite Europe, swaying the French and Norman kings to jettison their German-led loyalty to the other Pope. He needed to inspire the wealthy aristocrats to give large gifts and become leaders. He had to inspire them to leave their homes and go to likely deaths, as well, by entering a voluntary foreign war. In the Pope’s new sermon series, not going on this pilgrimage meant permitting unspeakable horrors, while going meant instant salvation and eternal glory.

The process of overkill and oversell worked too well. We’ve already seen how many of Europe’s second rank of royalty joined up; but the sermons preached in public reached other ears. Some of the listeners chose to boost the Pope’s signal by carrying the message of salvation by pilgrimage to everyone, not just to the royal courts. When the Byzantine Emperor sent his request for help to Pope Urban II, he lost control of the message as the Pope worked it into his own goals. Now, the Pope lost control of the message as the people of Europe took up a new cry: salvation by pilgrimage! God wills it!

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The Norman lords of Boulogne

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Ruth

Nobility on crusade, pt. 2

During the same period that Norman knights were conquering Sicily and parts of Italy, the Duke of Normandy conquered the island nation of England. The Anglo-Saxons continued to use the traditional Germanic war method of the shield wall, while the Norman lords had begun fight on horseback. It’s likely that Norman knights adopted horseback fighting after seeing their Saracen enemies in Spain, Italy and Sicily fight this way. Their ability to rain blows on the enemy from the height of a horse was a tactical advantage.

But at a key point in the Battle of Hastings, Duke William’s horse was killed by an arrow or spear. The Duke was left to fight on foot. One of the Duke’s liege lords, the Count of Boulogne, dismounted and gave his horse to the Duke, who continued to victory. The Count of Boulogne is also given credit for being one of those who eventually found and slew the English king. He was richly rewarded for his loyal service, although he stayed on the continent.

Boulogne-sur-Mer is on the coast of the English Channel, across from Dover. It is an important fishing town, but it also controls access to crossing the Channel. It was just part of Flanders until the 11th century’s sudden rise in Norman power, when it was elevated to its own County. The Counts of Boulogne were in the second rank of aristocracy just below royalty.

Eustace II married the daughter of the Duke of Lorraine, a province on the French-German border. They may have been the richest family in Western Europe at the time. Countess Ida endowed several monasteries as well as the Cathedral of Notre Dame de la Mer in Boulogne.

Eustace and Ida had three sons: Eustace, Godfrey, and Baldwin. It seems to have been a close and happy family; Ida is remembered as breast-feeding her own babies, so they were likely to have grown up together as well, not farmed out to separate nannies. Eustace inherited his father’s County as the IIIrd of that name, but Godfrey and Baldwin were at first landless.

Then Ida’s brother died childless and left Lower Lorraine to Godfrey. Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, refused to give all of the land to Godfrey. He let him have the city of Bouillon and demanded that Godfrey fight in his wars to prove loyalty for the rest. So Godfrey fought for Henry IV in Italy, helping to capture Rome and depose the Pope. Eventually Henry IV rewarded him with most of Lorraine, but Godfrey became known in history by the town of Bouillon: Godfrey of Bouillon.

All three brothers took part in the First Crusade. There is no greater sign of wealth than for all three heirs of a family to go on Crusade. A commander was more important in the Crusade as he brought more fighting men. It meant equipping their own personal troops, made of minor knights from around Flanders and Lorraine. Eustace, Godfrey and Baldwin were all commanders.

Eustace’s daughter married a Norman, son of the Count of Blois, who was born in France but went to England with Duke William. The younger Count of Blois was also a grandson of William the Conqueror and became King for a short time, so Eustace’s daughter was briefly a Queen.

Godfrey and Baldwin both became Kings of Jerusalem. When the Crusaders needed to establish governance in the territory they won, monarchy was their only model and they had to choose someone among themselves. Godfrey and Baldwin were not brothers of Kings, but they were independently wealthy and had gained status during the fighting. So in time, the Boulogne family became ancestors of all of the colorful, eccentric, short-lived Crusader-Jerusalem “royalty.”

 

 

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Nobility on crusade

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Ruth

Pope Urban II appointed a bishop, Adhemar of Monteil, Bishop of Le Puy, as his official legate, or representative on the official mission. Adhemar had been to the Holy Land before, and recently; he knew what Seljuk Muslim Palestine was like. He led the official First Crusade made up of well-armed and disciplined noblemen. He was himself the younger son of a Frankish noble family, so his training and manners fit well with his role of diplomacy among counts and kings.

The choice to follow Adhemar on what was officially billed as a “pilgrimage” was also a test of loyalty to Pope Urban II. Anyone could travel to the Holy Land, but only those approved by Urban were official crusaders with the promise of absolved sin. The King of Germany, Holy Roman Emperor, was not going to bow the knee to Urban in order to go along. He still stubbornly recognized only his own appointed Pope Clement III. His distant cousin, King Philip of France, also chose not to go. He was under ban of excommunication concerning his second wife, who was actively bearing him children while he was in his 50s. In order to make peace with the Pope, he had to divorce her, so he chose to stay home. William II, King of England, was not free to go, although an active King of England participated in a later crusade.

The next rank of royalty made up most of the First Crusade. Philip’s younger brother Hugh Count of Vermandois was one of the leaders. Hugh was not a skilled warrior, and like Philip he was getting on in years and had gained weight. But he had what mattered most: a large feudal estate that could afford the cost and manpower of raising a private army. The current Duke Robert of Normandy was younger brother to the King of England. He was another middle-aged knight, no longer at the top of his form, but with plenty of feudal ties to exploit and money to spend. But both Normandy and France had previously endorsed the anti-Pope, Clement III. In order to bask in the glow of holy war, they had to change their alliance, abandoning the King of Germany to his private pout.

The chief ruler of southern Italy, a Norman named Bohemund, was one of the Pope’s newer allies. He was the son of Robert Guiscard, the fiercest Norman brigand to invade Sicily and Italy. Robert conquered most of southern Italy, styling himself Count of Apulia and leaving his son as Prince of Taranto. Robert and Bohemund were both involved in the Norman attempt to help a Byzantine prince regain the throne, so they had previously traveled and fought in what’s now Croatia and Serbia. They were enemies of the reigning Byzantine Emperor, but alliances could shift very quickly and easily sometimes. Bohemund was all in favor of boosting Pope Urban’s power base and converting his part of Italy to Roman Catholicism; “saving” the Byzantine Emperor was the new way of fighting against him, that’s all.

Raymond IV Count of Toulouse joined the princes. Toulouse was an independent County for much of the medieval period, often allied against France. Three more Counts joined, bringing in the wealth of Flanders, Blois and Boulogne.

The Count of Boulogne rode with his brothers, and together they became the most famous personalities of the First Crusade. They’re worth looking at on their own, partly because they tell us a lot about the state of governance around 1100, and partly because of their later fame.

 

 

 

 

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Clermont’s Council, the original Crusade

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ruth

 

There was a second reason for Pope Urban II to announce a new military adventure. We’ve seen the first reason: he was in a high-stakes battle against the kings of France and Germany to retain Europe’s allegiance, as they supported an alternative Pope. If the Church had to accept the alternative Pope, it meant the Church was not a higher authority.

But the second reason was that Europe’s homelands had too many trained fighting men. Popes had tried to introduce the idea of “the peace of God,” a vow to maintain domestic peace in a region. Economically, though, it went against the grain. Inheritance of a landed estate by only the eldest son left many younger sons without independence. When too many of them hung around home, they often rebelled against the family head to take the estate. When too many of them built up in a force around some Count or Baron, they had a great incentive to attack a neighboring lord and redistribute those estates to themselves. When they were attached to no household or lord at all, they tended to stake out a bridge and force people to pay tolls. (The origin of those medieval stories in which a knight won’t let people pass.)

At Clermont, Pope Urban II made a long speech that first recounted all of the Cluniac reforms to separate Church and State. Then he addressed the peacekeeping problem Europe had. Travelers weren’t safe, alliances were constantly threatened, he scolded. What a waste of energy! Instead, he pointed them to a new foreign adventure.

The Pope had no funds to outfit an army to help Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. He had, instead, the power to grant forgiveness of sin and to mesmerize his audience with a vision. The barons and kings of Europe, he said, should stop using their money to buy and sell church influence. Use it to equip knights!

The Pope’s speech was written down in four separate accounts at various times. It was the most famous speech in Europe for centuries. The accounts differ a little, but they all agree that he vividly described the plight of pilgrims who were constantly held hostage for fees, buying themselves out of possible slavery. He described how the Turks despised Christianity and had plundered the churches. He quoted the Bible extensively, fitting his audience into the role of “God’s people” while the Turks were “Gentiles.” His speech wasn’t anti-Jew per se, but he certainly failed to take the Jewish point of view into account. It’s perhaps one time when the phrase “cultural appropriation” has a point.

The Pope had already appointed a Papal Legate (lawyer/agent) to command the army. He gave the knights one year to set their affairs in order and assemble in August 1096. He offered them unconditional forgiveness for going, but severe condemnation if they turned back. He declared spiritual condemnation for anyone who messed with the property or families of a pilgrim knight.

In one swoop, Pope Urban II established his authority, took a step toward Church reunification, dazzled medieval minds with visions of angels and miracles, drained Europe of surplus men and money, and tempted French and German knights to stop supporting their kings (who were *not* invited). It worked; the audience took up a cry of “Deus vult!” and began making pilgrim vows on the spot.

His speech began with strong statements of Cluniac reform: against the influence of money in the church, against state control, against worldly bishops appointed by kings. Then he moved to what we’d call the “money quote,” pulled out in large type to catch the eye:

“Although, O sons of God, you have promised more firmly than ever to keep the peace among yourselves and to preserve the rights of the church, there remains still an important work for you to do. Freshly quickened by the divine correction, you must apply the strength of your righteousness to another matter which concerns you as well as God.

“For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised them. For, as the most of you have heard, the Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have conquered the territory of Romania [the Greek empire] as far west as the shore of the Mediterranean and the Hellespont, which is called the Arm of St. George. They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them.

“On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.”

He promised instant forgiveness of sin to anyone who died in the attempt to fulfill his request. Pope Urban II may not have known just what a tidal wave he was triggering, but he had a Bishop already appointed as spiritual military commander. He set a starting date for August, 1096.

 

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